Binational School for Jewish and Palestinian kids

Caring for Their World

By Ruth McKee - Outreach Writer, AFNSWAS

Primary School students plant a new tree

This year, the students at the Primary School have been engaging in programming to learn how to care not only for each other but also the world around them. The students have been learning to nurture their environment, planting trees along the road leading up to the village in honor of Tu B’Shevat and Eid i-Shajara, and spending an activity day in the forest before spring break. Being green means, “making the effort so that the world will be cleaner for the people and the animals that live here,” explained Rayna, a sixth grader.

In April, the Primary School hosted an event centered on the Green Network, to which nine surrounding schools were invited. The Green Network program aims to educate children of all religions and races on the importance of the environment, and to monitor and support schools in initiating and developing environmental programs to reduce the ecological footprint of individuals and the surrounding community. The Green Network has operated with over 40 schools and 30 kindergartens in all sectors of the population in Israel; with Jews and Arabs, religious and secular; from the Galilee to Negev. At the program children were taught about the benefits of recycling, reusing, and the importance of being green. The Primary School has taken part in this program for the last three years! This year they had the honor of hosting under a new canopy over the turf play area.

The Primary School at NSWAS is so committed to recycling that it has a recycled art room, made from one of the first two wood huts that the people lived in when they settled the village. Everything inside and out is made from recycled materials and the kids work building art projects made of 100% recycled material. This could be just the beginning. The school staff would also like to develop a system to capture rainwater for irrigation, to construct solar electric panels on the roof, and even build a new kindergarten building in adobe style with recycled materials. Over the next few years there are plans to build a “Greenhouse Science Center” which will also incorporate the school’s current Zoo Lab animal center with a recycling center and plant nursery, and eventually be used as an education center for other schools in the region. The center will combine ecology with other areas of learning to create a hands-on experience for many more children in the region.

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